Monica Bonalto arrived in Dubai in 2017 with a background in hospitality journalism and quickly became one of the most trusted voices in the UAE's dining and nightlife space. Over seven years on the ground, she has reviewed more than 400 venues across all seven emirates — from the sun-baked beach clubs of JBR and the rooftop terraces of DIFC, to the understated local gems that rarely make it onto tourist lists. She has attended every major restaurant opening in Dubai since 2019 and maintains direct relationships with PRs and venue operators across the city — which means the information you read in her guides is always verified, never recycled from a press release. Her specialities are happy hours (she has personally verified every deal on our lists), Friday brunches, and the Northern Emirates' emerging food scene. She is based in DIFC and eats out five times a week. When she says a place is worth your money, it is. Follow Monica's work on Muck Rack , Substack , Vocal , and Medium .
The Dubai Mall doesn’t have a restaurant problem, it has an abundance problem. Google throws back well over 150 food and drink listings for the building, and half the “best of” guides floating around online just copy each other’s lists without checking whether the unit numbers still match reality. Tenants rotate constantly in a mall…
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DIFC is where Dubai eats when someone else is paying, or when the occasion demands a bit more than a mall food court. Roughly a square kilometre of glass towers and pedestrianised courtyards packs in more genuinely good restaurants per square metre than almost anywhere else in the city, but the district is not one…
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Mall of the Emirates has always had two personalities: the ski slope everyone photographs, and the dining scene that quietly does the harder work of getting you fed before or after. Between the Kempinski wing, the Sheraton wing, the Level 2 restaurant strip and the ground floor food court, there are now more places to…
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Yas Mall is the biggest shopping centre in Abu Dhabi and, by extension, one of the biggest dining rooms in the capital. It sits a short walk from Ferrari World, Warner Bros. World, Yas Waterworld, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi and Etihad Arena, which means the crowd wandering through its food court on any given afternoon is…
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Ask anyone who has spent a 3am taxi ride craving mixed grill and hummus where to go, and Aroos Damascus will come up before the driver has even pulled off. It is one of Dubai’s longest-running Syrian restaurants, the kind of place where the queue at midnight is as long as the one at lunch,…
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Quranic Park doesn’t look like much from the entrance, pleasant landscaping, a couple of themed gardens. Then you reach the Cave of Miracles and the Glass House, and it becomes clear this is one of Dubai’s more genuinely thoughtful public parks, built around a concept you won’t find anywhere else in the city. What Is…
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Don’t miss The Corrs at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi on 27 September 2026. Get ticket prices, timings, and details on the iconic Irish quartet’s return.
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If your Instagram feed needs a serious sugar rush, Candy Museum Dubai is built for exactly that. It’s part sweet shop, part interactive art installation, part full-blown sensory experience — a candy-coloured playground of oversized lollipop forests, marshmallow clouds and ball pits that photograph beautifully and, refreshingly, are actually fun to walk through rather than…
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Let’s clear something up before anything else: Bâoli Dubai is not on Palm Jumeirah, whatever a stray URL somewhere on the internet might suggest. It sits at J1 Beach on Jumeirah 1, the stretch of reclaimed coastline that’s quietly become one of the city’s busiest beach club postcodes, sandwiched between the Jumeirah Beach strip and…
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If your feed has been full of neon corridors, secret doors and people mid-scream inside what looks like a fever dream, chances are you have already seen House of Hype without realising what it was. Tucked inside Dubai Mall, this is not a restaurant, a bar or a nightclub in the traditional sense. Instead, it…
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Bowling doesn’t need reinventing, but Dubai International Bowling Centre has quietly become one of the city’s most reliable, no-frills nights out — decent lanes, arcade games to fill the gaps between frames, and none of the velvet-rope pretension that comes with a lot of Dubai’s newer entertainment venues. It’s a solid pick for birthdays, corporate…
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Get ready for Nancy Ajram Live in Dubai. Find out everything you need to know about her 2026 Coca-Cola Arena concert, including dates, times, and ticket prices.
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